The so-called Cambridge Five continue to fascinate, but how do you feed a market when new facts are so scarce? The temptation has been to seize on the smallest fresh nugget and ascribe to X or Y and their acolytes a greater wickedness or...
It’s not every day you go on holiday with the mother of a superstar. That’s what happened when I was asked to join a house party with a motley crew of characters at an Italian castle, including Amy Winehouse’s mum, Janis. What could possibly...
The Satanic Verses
When Richard Anobile was putting together his book on the Marx Brothers, Why a Duck?, he asked Groucho Marx to write an introduction. Sure, said Groucho, ‘but the book would probably sell better if you called it Why a F**k?’ I thought of that...
Matt Ridley, the science writer and ornithologist, has a Northumbrian farm. It attracts eight summer migrant warblers (Sylvidae, ‘of the woods’, from Latin silva), which come here from Africa to breed. He has kindly written the following for...
